Brutal Newsweek-Slapping Spree Leaves 34 Dead

Despite having the windows closed and the a/c cranked for, oh, the entire summer, a posse of flies somehow broke into my apartment. I came home today to find the kitchen windows abuzz with an absolute horde of fucking flies. Well, okay, they weren’t actually in the act of fucking, but they obviously had reproduced sometime recently, because there was a shitload of ‘em.

There are Jains who adhere so strongly to non-violence and non-killing that they wear masks to avoid breathing in tiny insects. I admire the strength of their principles. The flies should go find a Jain’s house.

The latest copy of Newsweek was the closest thing handy. I subscribed when a coworker’s daughter was selling magazines for the Girl Scouts. I usually read the political cartoons, captions, and graphics, then skim the rest of the articles in about fifteen minutes. Along with the Ann Arbor News and cat food cans, Newsweek is good for recycling. And bug-killing.

Within seconds I had perfected a fly-splattering, wrist-snapping technique. The green bottle flies were only stunned by direct blows and I quickly found it was best to hit them at an angle with the magazine folded in half. This ruptured their exteriors, and even if it didn’t always kill them outright, it at least left them dangling from the window panes, stuck there by their giant exploded eyes.

Five minutes later, the carnage was over. The cat came back out from under the desk while I collected the casualties and scrubbed the guts off the windows. The pages of Newsweek bear multicolored stains and a hairy leg or two. My only regret is that it wasn’t George Will’s turn to write “The Last Word.”

Update: 11:30 pm. The body count now stands at 41.